


a gift most ardent

by meltic_daze



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: 1k, Angst, Angstober, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Revelations, anakin get your shit together, guest appearance by everyones favourite grandfather, luke cycling through his feelings, sad thoughts, yearning / mourning ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29683131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meltic_daze/pseuds/meltic_daze
Summary: gift1. a thing given willingly to someone without payment; a present.2. poison, any substance which causes death or illnessor, someone makes a choice
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader
Comments: 17
Kudos: 27
Collections: Angstober 2020





	a gift most ardent

**Author's Note:**

> hello yes this is my first serious fic since 2017 please be kind
> 
> kinda a serious one, since this was originally written for the angstober prompt 1: "i did it for you."  
> obviously that didn't pan out

Darth Vader is an indomitable force in the battlefield. A being cloaked in shadow cutting a blood-drenched path through all that opposed him. A one man army decimating swaths of enemies at the behest of his master. His very existence was a ghost story of the galaxy, something a parent would whisper to a child to keep them from trouble. Even in the rebellion the perception of Vader as a force of nature lingered. As soon as he was sighted on the battlefield, all troops were instructed to escape no matter the cost. Luke would never forget the looks of horror on his squadmates' faces before they clamored in their x-wings and jumped into hyperspace.

Luke knew all this mentally. Had seen it first hand when Biggs fell in a burst of sparks and metal right next to him. Felt it when a thousand voices cried out at once when the lives of rebellion soldiers were snuffed and joined the force. Knowing all that was exactly what made his father’s state so _strange_ to him.

Now, Vader floated in a medbay bacta tank. Silent. Motionless.

Vulnerable.

His father’s pale head ridged with deep scars he would never explain. Those hands that throttled breath from screaming men drifted listlessly. Deepset blue eyes so painfully like his own but rimmed with yellow twitched beneath still eyelids. There were new marks scored across the expanse of pallid skin, marks seared with a swing of an angry lightsaber and a pained son. Luke winced at the memory of burning flesh, his own burning flesh, _his father’s_.

Vader may as well be a statue for all that he moved. Somehow Luke couldn’t tear himself away from frantically searching for signs of life, for any minute movements, just to know he wasn’t dead after selling his soul. When Luke probed at their bond and sensed a quiet thrumming presence, he felt something inside him uncurl. It startled Luke just how frightened it made him, how terrified he was of losing the one life who had taken so much from so many. 

Before he even knew his father he despised him. He listened as Ben’s voice spun his stories of a failed apprentice murdering his father in cold blood, his eyes shut in grief. Luke’s heart trembled at the pain of this man who somehow appeared even older than he already did, as if the tatooine sand had merely weathered his skin whereas these events eroded something that cannot be conveyed. His grip shook on a birthright he didn’t know was bathed in the splatter of a thousand innocents and he vowed to uphold his father’s valor.

All he had of his father were boyish fantasies of flying away from this hells-forsaken planet together- to explore the galaxy with the man he wanted more than anything to know. But then, holding the hilt in his hands, Luke knew in some deep primal place beneath his skin and beyond words that this _meant_ something. That maybe Luke Skywalker, a boy on a forgotten speck on the boundary of the galaxy, was meant for more. But then, Ben spoke again and his world upended for the first time at the sound of a name.

Hate sprung from his heart as arid and burning hot as the desert sands. His father, murdered and betrayed by a faceless man. From a certain point of view this explanation made sense. Crazy old Ben, desert dweller Ben, wouldn’t lie to him. Perhaps it was his naivety that led him to brush off the uneasiness that rose somewhere in the air. The taste of a lie he never knew was uttered, left to rot.

Scorching hatred burned in his chest until their second meeting when the universe turned on its head a second time. Darth Vader wasn’t just a monster, not anymore. Nor was he something beyond natural understanding. He was just a man- no, Luke’s _father_. He would’ve thought it a dream if not for the agony of a star coming to life under the skin of his wrist. He tried to hold that truth, grasp it in his mind, but Luke couldn’t focus past the sound of something like hoarse gasping in his head. He shuddered, fingers clutching onto the metal for some semblance of support when his entire world crumpled. Vader spoke more but his pointed words fell on deaf ears.

Luke stared onwards, unwilling to hear what Vader had to stay. A black-clothed hand stretched out to him, dangling the hopes of a lonely boy right in front of him. His inner self, a young Luke Skywalker he thought shriveled and died when Ben told him of murder, yearned to take that hand and run away. It felt mocking. That the universe would place his greatest wish - his father - alongside the most horrific circumstances beyond imagining. If Vader said this was fate, destiny, then Luke thought fate was cruel. Only one thing was more devastating.

Because the cruelest thing of all was that Luke loved him. Not with the fierceness he expected, but a quiet whisper that spoke of miracles and love and _come away with me I beg you_ \- The gantry was cold under his grip, but even the shivers wracking his form couldn't erase the sound. 

Even still, even with all this, Luke couldn’t take that hand. It would destroy them both and leave him a shadow of his former self that laughed in the face of everything he once stood for. He couldn't let that happen. Not even for the man a little boy once knew as Anakin Skywalker. The force swirled with warning around Vader and Luke knew there was one thing left to try. As he fell, the last thing he remembered was the touch of a cold tendril reaching for him before suddenly fading into emptiness. Somehow Luke never forgot that cool, comforting touch, pondering it on occasion before brutally driving it out of his mind. 

These were the memories echoing in Luke’s thoughts as he stood victorious, his fallen enemy- his fallen father- in a heap of shadowy armour. Vader’s once immaculate shield collapsed and waves of aching regret with a tendril of fear rushed the young jedi. That fear wasn’t for Vader. What was left of his father’s force presence curled around him, weakening over time. Luke clutched at it desperately as if he were the dying man. His anger had fallen away at the horror overtaking him of having dealt a killing blow. Before he realized it he collapsed on his knees and took his father’s remaining - _because of you a voice in the back of his mind whispered_ \- hand and held it tight. That haunting insectoid helmet turned to him but fell slack.

 _At least the last thing I see will be you, my son_ and silence reigned. Somehow Luke felt that was worse, that horrible respirator has never been muted but now its lack of presence was deafening. If only his father didn’t stubbornly cling to the rotting mold in the force that was the dark side. If only father and son hadn’t come to blows for an empire. 

Luke always knew the only language his father knew was violence. He choked on a hysterical laugh. He didn’t know it was heritable.

One word from the Emperor and the world halted in its tracks.

The universe held its breath.

Blood in his eyes, his chest heaving, and the cackling of the emperor ringing in his ears. There was only one thought on his mind. Luke’s eyes travelled from his gloved hand to the sizzling, shaking form of his father. Vader’s cold fire grew fainter and fainter with every pump of his heart pushing blood into the tiled floors. Numbness settled a shroud over his shoulders.

_I have to save him._

There was only one thing he could do, really. In the moment, where he could imagine his father’s silent screams echoing into the force along with the faint pleading of a woman begging for aid, for anyone to just _help_ , there was one option glaring.

Living in a world without the father he never knew would be unbearable. It was a selfish decision, but his decision all the same.

His eyes refocused on the present.

“I’ll be his weapon to wield however he wants if it means you’re alive,” Luke whispered, raising his flesh hand to press against the cold transparisteel.

“I did it for you father, and I will never regret it.” Luke held for a moment before letting his fingertips drift downwards. He stared long and hard at his reflection until the insistent mental _tug_ from his new master grew unbearable. Luke stumbled out, heart heavy, and tried desperately not to notice the glimmer of gold in his eye.

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to the discord pals who encouraged me you guys r epic  
> just as a special thank you heres a tidbit i had to take out
> 
> -  
> From then on until their second meeting, Luke despised him. He was Vader the father-stealer, Vader the Leia-torturer. The dream-killer. Whenever Luke glanced at the insectoid mask, bulging eyes and all, a wave of something boiling and screaming grew inside. When it tilted in his direction on Bespin the impression rose to a fever pitch and smoldered his lungs. Luke inhaled flame and charged without thought and the two clashed like raging krayt dragons in the dunes of Tatooine. Again and again he rushed until Luke slipped up. A searing pain came to life in his wrist. The fight lulled and the two enemies stared at each other, the tension thickening into a living writhing thing. Something was coming.
> 
> From across the galaxy, the emperor grinned.


End file.
